4.44 How to do a PhD later in life (a double coaching episode)

Whether you are doing your PhD later in life, you supervise older PhD students, or you’re younger and sometimes feel like you’re not ready for academia, then this episode is for you. You’ll hear me coach Louise and Kath, who are doing their PhDs later in life. We discuss how imposter syndrome hits different when you’ve got prior experience, the impact of other commitments, and even some regrets. Both take some tangible next steps away from the session, so I hope you will too, whatever your life stage. 

If you liked this episode, you might also like this episode on doing a PhD with menstrual dysfunction. 

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

Vikki: Hello, and welcome to the PhD Life Coach Podcast, and we are gonna be doing another one of my double coaching episodes. So these are designed to give you a insight into a specific area of doing a PhD and academia more generally, and to give you an idea of what it's like in the PhD Life Coach membership, where we do this sort of group coaching all the time. And this week, we are going to be thinking about doing a PhD later in life.

Vikki: Now, we were just having a discussion about the fact that we may have different conceptions of what later in life means, and in a second you'll hear from the people who are with me today, and they can tell you a little bit more of what life stage they're at. But we are gonna be thinking about doing a PhD when it's sort of not straight out of a master's as someone in your 20s or whatever, a bit later on in life, and the challenges and opportunities that come alongside that.

Vikki: As usual, if you are thinking, "Oh, that's not me. I'm 23. I'm doing it right now," don't worry. All of these, everyone's having human experiences. You will be surprised how much you take, that you resonate with even if you aren't doing PhD later in life. But if you are, I think you will hear some views that you will really resonate with and that you may not have heard elsewhere.

Vikki: So hi, Louise and Kath. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Louise, do you wanna tell everyone a little bit about you? 

Louise: Sure. Well, I am definitely mature age. I'm 70 years old. I live in Sydney, Australia, but I am doing my doctorate at the University of London. So I'm both old and distant. And I've done quite a few degrees, honors, master's, and I'm at the write-up stage of my doctorate, and it is proving way more challenging than I expected 

Vikki: Perfect. Thank you. And Louise likes to remind us quite often that she's one of our older members. Uh, She is also one of the few members that ran the London Marathon this year. So she is a particular style of 70-year-old, I think it's fair to say. Thank you for that. Kath, how about you? 

Kath: Uh, so I, um, I really struggle to say which year I'm in because I'm doing a professional doctorate part-time, so the first part of that was taught. Um, so I am in the data collection phase of my doctorate.

Kath: I was a secondary teacher for 25 years before I started working in initial teacher education. So yeah, I came to this whole process thinking that I had quite a lot of knowledge. 

Vikki: Perfect. And you're still working alongside your professional doctorate now, aren't you? 

Kath: Yep. So I am currently working full time and doing the doctorate.

Vikki: Perfect. And we are gonna start with Kath. So Louise, if you wanna pop yourself on mute and turn your camera off, then Kath and I are gonna have a chat first, and then we'll invite you back in a minute

Vikki: Okay. So Kath, you mentioned that coming into it you felt like you had a lot of experience and that that would stand you in good stead. Tell me more about those expectations. 

Kath: So as I said, I was a teacher for 25 years. I then joined the university, and as part of that I started doing some master's work. I loved that. I really enjoyed being back as a student. It was, you know, relatively structured, reading lists and tasks, assignments to do. After a few modules, it was suggested that rather than going on to do the dissertation and the master's, I could consider moving on to the professional doctorate.

Kath: I don't know if people are familiar with that, but the EdD is an educational doctorate where you have a year or a couple modules that are taught, and then you go on to the thesis stage, and it's a shorter thesis than you would normally do for a PhD. So that seemed straightforward's not true, but a logical step for me.

Kath: I had been exploring mentoring relationships during student placements in the master's work that I had done, and I'd got very curious and enthused about this. It had caused me to think about things differently. So I thought, "Oh, great. Here's a whole big new playground of 60,000 words to write about," 'cause I always write too much in my assignments.

Kath: I thought, "This is just ideal. It's a commitment, but I'm up for it. I've managed pretty well up til now, so why wouldn't that continue?" My husband has a PhD that he did when he was 22, 23, and I knew it wasn't easy, but it was quite doable. But as I have got into it, it has thrown up all sorts of self-learning and knowledge about self-efficacy and imposter syndrome and umpteen other labels that I hadn't expected to find along the way.

Vikki: Yes. Absolutely. Tell me more about that. What sorts of things has it thrown up for you? 

Kath: I have learned that I like being a student in a taught environment, a very structured way of doing things. And as a teacher, and now a tutor, I would have thought I had the skill set and the professional knowledge to know how to structure my time and how to work without constant extrinsic motivation.

Kath: I understood that by moving into a thesis, you know, you're not accountable on a weekly basis to other people, that you have to go away and do things. So I've been quite shocked at the dissonance or disturbance that I have felt in not always man- m- often not managing to, to do that. And that's why I found myself joining the PhD Life Coach community, because I'm looking, I suppose, for like-minded people, and also to find out more about myself and how I work at 56, which is quite funny really.

Vikki: Why is it... So that transition from master's to PhD is, is a transition for everybody, right? That kind of move from, that kind of highly structured, highly externally regulated, as you say, environment, to one where you're having to be much more self-driven, impose structure yourself, and so on. That's there for anybody who changes from master's to PhD. What is it, do you think, about either doing it at this age or doing it with the expectation that it wouldn't have been as difficult that's somehow making it harder? 

Kath: I think I maybe... I feel it's further to fall when you have got professional expertise- Mm ... through the time that you have served.

Kath: It felt like it would be part of a continuum, delving into this sort of practical professional wisdom that I could bring to the table. And that does still exist, but I think it's more the self-learning at a time when I thought that doing it at this stage in my life, my children are older, they are studying away from home.

Kath: I thought that I would have more time, and it's a little bit like I think a lot of people during the pandemic. We discovered that actually having time isn't the issue. That there's a- the way that we behave and the actions that we take. So for me, it's probably the confluence of changing to working in a university along with studying.

Kath: So as a secondary school teacher, you have such a structured way of being that you don't really have time to think. You're always busy, you're moving forwards, and things just have to happen because it's the cycle of a school. Whereas now, I am much more responsible for how I use my time and for how I portion it up.

Kath: So that's part of it for me. But I think along with that, for me, and I don't want to turn the podcast into one all about menopause, but I think there are elements in my mid-50s of self-doubt, imposter syndrome, as I mentioned, insecurities that I hadn't really anticipated. Seeing some younger colleagues and younger people that I support at university, they just don't seem to have those, and I'm sure there will be people listening who go, "Well, I'm 23, and I've got lots of insecurities as well," and I get that. But there's a certain something that I didn't feel this previously in my life, and now it just seems to be all of these factors coming together.

Vikki: Mm-hmm. Yes, a bit of a sort of perfect storm. 

Kath: Or an imperfect storm. 

Vikki: Imperfect storm. Yes, absolutely. And those worries that you have, do they feel like they're related to your age? Or is it that you're just surprised that you are having these worries given your age? 

Kath: I think it's quite hard to unpick what... and if you look at anything or you Google anything now, it's like the menopause is responsible for anything you care to, to add, together, as a search term. I think quite possibly it's more the surprise that I'm having this self-learning at this stage in my life, and that if I hadn't embarked on the thesis, I may well not have known this about myself. And when I was reflecting in preparation for today and I had my sort of thoughts, but I do have an arrow here going, "Is this any more than anybody else is feeling anyway." And I, I think it's quite difficult to identify. 

Vikki: Yeah. And what are you making it mean that you've identified these things?

Kath: Well, I've been in the membership long enough, Vikki, to know that you'll know that I'm making it mean that I don't know whether I should be here, and I don't know whether I'm clever enough. I don't know if I'm capable of the hard thinking, the finding the time and doing the work. And an added dimension to our imperfect storm is that I'm doing my doctorate at the institution that I work in, so I am being supervised by colleagues which adds another precarity to it. And it's the should I stay or should I go thoughts that I sometimes have around this. And in part it's like, well, if I stop then that just draws a line under it. But then it's like, yes, but if you stop, people will think, well, oh my goodness, she's not capable, and she's not- continued with it. So, so yeah, there's a whole lot of elements within this that makes it really hard to say, do I just need to up my HRT and all will be well? And I don't think that that's the case. 

Vikki: Yeah. And it's such an interesting constellation. As you know, we have quite a few members who are sort of our sort of age and you know, working either part-time or full-time alongside their studies, having had successful careers and things. And you'll have heard other people getting coached on this too, that this combination of having been senior and responsible for other people. You know, you were doing initial teach- tr- you are doing initial teacher training. You're mentoring people all the time. You're probably having conversations with them that you feel like maybe you need to have with yourself. I have that quite a lot. Um, so you have this sort of senior confidence coming into it, but suddenly in this context, the PhD context, it feels different. 

Kath: Yep. 

Vikki: What impact is that having on you getting work done? Or what impact is it having full stop? 

Kath: It's the self-doubt, I think. So the first two modules of the taught ED, I did well in. My submissions are used as examples for future cohorts and so on. I, I was able to write, I was able to do all this. So each assignment was about 6,000 words. We did two of them in a year. I was like, "12,000 words? No worries. I can do, you know, 60,000." But I think once the stabilizers, the structures come off and it's like, you're not left on your own, but you know, you're going into it, I have begun to doubt so many bits of what I am doing. So for instance, my literature review, I have a very loose literature review, and I get feedback.

Kath: And my supervisors are supportive, so it's not- that they're not. But I have found receiving, let's just say, direct feedback about my writing really hard. Up till now, I've only ever submitted things that are finished, so they're good and they do well. But here, where you're sharing rough work, and maybe it's my interpretation of what's rough and what's not. And I know you've spoken about that in podcasts before, and I've tried having these conversations. But if you're getting feedback about needing to have topic sentences or, you know, sort your references. And you're like, this is five years out from being my finished work. So that's kind of knocked my confidence and possibly... I mean, I've, I failed my driving test twice, so it's not like I've sailed through life being perfect. But it is quite hard, and I don't know if that feels harder at this age and stage than it would have done when I was younger and would have taken it in my stride. I can't speak to that because obviously I'm not doing it at that stage.

Kath: I think I also internalize more now and maybe mither away at it and sort of can't just let it, let it go. So I think, yeah, the receiving of feedback, the lack of structure means that in some ways... And that's why I really, I do struggle to say, "Oh my goodness, I'm in my third year part-time," because I feel I'm in a bit of a quagmire, and I've not made the progress that I would expect.

Vikki: Yeah. I think it's so interesting. Uh, this is where I really hope that people who are doing their PhDs early in their lives are still listening because I think often people who are doing PhD, they feel like, if I just came in and I had some experience, I had some, you know, life achievements, I knew I could do things, I knew I could get through hard things, then this would be all right.

Vikki: You know? I would have, I would have that confidence and that even if this is new, I would know that I've overcome things before. And I think this is such a good example about how context-specific self-efficacy can be. And we know that from a theoretical perspective, right? Yeah. But you suddenly see it in reality.

Vikki: And I think often that jarring is actually harder than not being senior anywhere. You know, we've got other academics in the membership. We've also got people who were, you know, senior legal professionals, senior medical professionals, all sorts of things. And that jarring between being the person that people go to for advice and the people who declare whether things are good enough or not over here, and then suddenly being in that student role over here can almost feel worse, I think, than- not, not ever having been more senior. 

Kath: And I think quite often you pick up on the use of the word just when people use it, and that Nike advert of just do it is what frequently goes through my head. Like, for God's sake just- Yeah ... just get on and do it. Write a blooming paragraph. How hard can it be? You know, you've done tens of thousands of words in your lifetime. But I think once you start unraveling a bit, it's quite hard to really be focused. And I, learning about planning and procrastination and all the rest, but the blocks of time that have writing in them, I've still not, in the last few months, got over the hurdle of actually writing. Okay. Editing I can do. Finding more interviews I can do. 

Vikki: Let's talk specifically about that. Because within this context, right? Because whenever we have a short chunk of coaching like this, I think it's really useful to have something really tangible- Okay. Yeah ... to pull out of it as well. So think about the last time you had a writing block on your calendar.

Kath: Yep. 

Vikki: Was that recent? 

Kath: Interesting it's a writing block, 'cause that's exactly what it is, um, a writer's ... block. But, yeah, it was- 

Vikki: But are, you are putting the writing in your calendar?

Kath: I am putting that in. Yep. Okay. So I had two hours, two 50-minute sessions on Monday is what I had. 

Vikki: So what happened? 

Kath: What happened was I was looking at the methodology that I had drafted out months and months ago and hadn't touched for a while. And I started reading mine, and then I went, "Mm, don't know if it's structured very well." So I've got a few theses who have done similar focus on, so on mentoring, so I looked at them and was looking at their structure, and that was the first 50 minute had gone- in looking at that. So then I walked around the kitchen, came back, and looked to it.

Kath: And then I did do some writing. I did about 20 minutes of just free writing of what I had done, and then I was like, "Oh, right, now I need to get out Bryman and Cohen and whatnot," and started looking at semi-structured interviews and referencing and so on. So in the two hours that I had set aside, I did about 20 minutes of writing. And that writing, I then found myself immediately going, "Well, that's just like a stream of consciousness. It's not good writing." Um, so, so yeah. And that's quite common. If I get to the writing in amongst doing the work and all the rest of it, I am still struggling, despite being totally on board with the time blocking in my diary, when it comes to the practice of literally only doing that role I am scattergun magpie whatever. I really struggle to be a completer-finisher and to just- Yeah ... focus on it. 

Vikki: Okay. Perfect. Let's start thinking about why that is. So I was gonna take you through some questions then. You've been in the membership a little while, so I'm gonna ask you. Why do you think it is? 

Kath: I think it's, it's hard writing and it's easier to look at what somebody else has done- or to dig out the, the chunky research books and have a look at them than it is to really think and go, what is your framework? What exactly are you doing here? And having some hard thoughts around it, and then trying to unpick that and restructure what I'm doing.

Kath: I can fill my time very effectively and be busy, and I think that's what I've really learnt about procrastination. It doesn't mean switching off the laptop and going and watching something on Netflix. It can be busyness, but not effective busyness. In part, I also think my previous job in school meant that you were constantly juggling, so it was perfectly normal to have a class in front of me, have a bit of me dealing with a colleague's issues whilst also answering an email, and thinking that that was perfectly normal- and believing that I was still focusing on each thing. Whereas writing and thinking, it needs to be my singular focus. And I think let park in the other stuff is the hard bit. 

Vikki: Yeah. So people watching this on YouTube will have seen me smirk at that. That's 'cause I'm married to an ex-head deputy headteacher and I very much recognize that the amount of times he'll be doing something and I'll be talking and be like, "You're not listening to me." "No, I am. I can do five things at once. I learnt it in teaching." It's like, you're not. Okay.

Vikki: So one of the things as you know we talk about in the membership quite a lot is separating the kind of implementer version of you from the boss version of you, okay? So I think you've identified that the implementer version of you is avoiding staying focused on one thing and is avoiding the kind of more difficult, in your mind, conceptual stuff of actually generating new words, and instead convincing themselves it's okay that they're looking stuff up and checking bits and things.

Vikki: Now, just to clarify for everybody, I know you know this, Kath, just to clarify for everybody else, there's nothing wrong with looking stuff up, right? We have to look stuff up, but it's when we're looking stuff up in time blocks that we intended to be generating words, that's the challenge here. And as you say, it's a really common way of procrastinating, staying in the comfy stuff rather than pushing forwards. Um, what can boss you do to help the implementer you that's struggling with that at the moment? 

Kath: Well, most weeks are like, I need my boss me to be focused and to break down tasks and to tell me exactly what I need to do And I noticed 'cause I did the quarterly thing off from the video yesterday, you had specified that you need to break these down, and I don't think I am breaking down the work sufficiently. So I had writing methodology, revisit previous chapter, something like that- on Monday.

Vikki: What does that mean? 

Kath: Oh, well, very good question. 'Cause that could be a month's worth of work if you were working at it- full time. And I think, and apologies, I keep referring back to other things from the membership, but, one point you had spoken before about, you know, just if things are too big, you're just not gonna do them and it's just completely ineffectual. And also, people who say they don't have time to plan are the people who need to plan the most. And that's me. You know, it gets to Tuesday lunchtime, I'm like, "Oh, my God, I haven't broken it down," 'cause I'm just too busy in work."

Kath: And that's another element of the role that I'm in just now, is that my work and my thesis are very interlinked because my thesis is on elements of my work, and I do get a bit of scholarship in my workload, so I can do bits during the week. So yeah, I don't plan sufficiently well. And I am more and more realizing that taking an hour, whether it's Friday afternoon or if when I'm working over the weekend or whatever, to really drill down into what is it you're going to do. What can you achieve in 50 minutes that will move the dial a tiny, tiny bit? 

Vikki: Yeah. And this doesn't have to be some hu- often people are quite black-and-white thinking about this, that this has to therefore be some, like, 30-step plan that you've worked out that's all perfect. But a question that I think is really useful to ask yourself is what counts. So if you've got a two-hour writing block in your diary for Monday, you had that on Monday, and you had revisit methodology chapter as your task. Well, if I was implementor Kath, I'm like, I looked at it, I decided that the structure wasn't very good, and I went off to find some better structures. Tick. That counts as revisit chapter. But it sounds as though it didn't match what boss you actually thinks you should have been doing, 'cause that's why you're beating yourself up for not having ... 'Cause if that was what boss you meant- 

Kath: Yeah ... 

Vikki: you should be going, "Tick." Right. Yeah. "Revisited it. That was exactly what I needed to do. I'm not gonna yell at myself for not writing, because within the task of revisit methodology chapter, that was as good as anything else."

Vikki: So how can boss you, even if they haven't done it in advance, even if it's just in that first five minutes of your two-hour block, give me an example of what boss you could say that would make it much clearer what counts and what doesn't in this time block? 

Kath: Yeah, definitely think boss me needs to work on clarity of instruction. That would definitely help I think for me to feel like I am moving forward, if it's a writing block and I have revisited the task, it would be rewrite paragraph on participant recruitment with appropriate referencing or, you know, something- Yeah ... that I can go, "I have done that." 

Vikki: Yeah. 

Kath: I think that would help. 'Cause you're absolutely right, implementer me did notionally do what was on the task sheet- but both me had a different idea of moving things forward. 

Vikki: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, any of us with teenagers, you say, "Tidy bedroom." Okay, go and see it. "Well, why is there still old plates in here? Why is there still whatever in here?" Well, you didn't say clear that. You said tidy bedroom. I've put my clothes away. You know? It's like, yeah, you did one element of tidy bedroom. It's fair enough. You did that bit. And I think we do that to ourselves sometimes. One way to simplify, 'cause it's hard to every single time give yourself really detailed instructions as to exactly what it means. One thing I find useful is to distinguish, is this a text generation session? 

Kath: Okay. 

Vikki: Or is this an editing session? Or is this a looking stuff up for future writing session? And having those three things separate from each other. Okay? That's simplified for the listeners. You've got access to how to write when you're struggling to write course in the membership, which goes through my seven roles of writing, which you could look up.

Vikki: And that just goes in a little bit more detail. But essentially being clear, are you meant to be generating new words and sentences that don't currently exist? Are you meant to be changing existing ones for a certain endpoint? Or are you meant to be either kind of planning or looking up stuff? Even just dividing it into one of those and being clear which it is- 

Louise: Yeah

Vikki: can help it be a little bit more, difficult for implementer you to go, "Oh no, but this is what I need to do." 

Kath: And I think there's also a misguided belief for me that every time I spend time, which isn't data gathering or whatever, that there should be an output of more words, and that that's just unrealistic, and that some parts of the studying and time well spent won't have a tangible output in a sort of paragraphs or words. It might have moved my thinking on and my planning, but it's not necessarily more words. 

Vikki: Yeah. Where I would... I 100% agree with what you just said. I would say there should be an output. 

Kath: Yeah. I realize that- 

Vikki: Which is the output isn't- ... 

Kath: the output isn't a concrete, tangible thing, but it might be a thinking thing.

Vikki: No, but it could... No, but I think it's useful to ask yourself in every block of time, "What's my tangible output here?" 

Kath: Okay. 

Vikki: Um, but not to conceptualize your tangible output as having to be new words generated. Right. Sometimes that is exactly what you need, and it sounds as though that's what you're avoiding to some extent.

Vikki: But if it is genuinely a, "I need to look at other people's methodology structures," then the tangible output might be, "I need three summary structures of other people's thesises." 'Cause then it moves you away from, "I'll just sort of look at some stuff and wonder," towards, "I'm gonna find three, I'm gonna summarize them, I'm gonna pick which one I like best," for example.

Vikki: And just makes it that bit more tangible. Okay. I'm gonna finish with one question that I think is a really useful question for anybody who has had a life pre-PhD. What skills do you have from other parts of your life, that you want to draw more in to helping you during your PhD?

Kath: I think something that you mentioned quite a lot is working when there's discomfort, and I think having been a schoolteacher, marking and things happened of an evening and at a weekend. And so as a part-time doctoral student, I am quite happy, maybe is an overstatement, but content with the notion that this will only happen if I'm working at the edges when I am a bit tired and a bit not up for it. I'm not saying that that's what I always do. And it's something that maybe in my current job I've moved away from slightly, but I think I need to lean more into that or it won't happen, because I won't- magically find the time. 

Vikki: Yeah. And pondering how can you do that in a way, how can you use the skills you have from teaching to do that in a way that doesn't feel brutally punishing, but instead feels like, "This is my time when I get this stuff done, and I'm capable of doing things when I'm a little bit tired."

Kath: And I think an epiphany that I had in relation to that, because I didn't really block time, I was just like, 'Oh, Sunday morning I'll do some studying. Ooh, chaos." But I think by blocking two or three hours on a Sunday morning and doing it and then stopping when the time's up, I suddenly realized then I would feel I had done something. Whereas just amorphous study for- some bit of time when it comes up your back means it's never done and it never goes away. But if it is in a block of time, then that is much more freeing in terms of having time that isn't study. 

Vikki: Yeah. And you must have seen that with students, right? That you give them revision sessions at school or whatever, they're much more likely just to come in, get it done and leave than when you say, "Oh, just do some revision at some point." Yeah, absolutely. So many people push back on it and are like, you know, "Oh, I don't want to structure all my fun." It's like, no, no, but literally we're structuring fun in. We're- Yeah ... saying that if you've got that stuff so that you know when you are working, it means you know when you're not working and you can f- and especially when you're full-time work, part-time PhD, having time that is time blocked as definitely fun and fun only is hugely important. So yeah, love that. Perfect. Louise, do you wanna come back on?

Vikki: How was that for you, Louise? Was there, were there things that- 

Louise: Yeah, very resonant. Lot- Yeah ... lots of things that struck chords, yes 

Vikki: Anything that you want to kinda take for yourself and can see yourself applying?

Louise: Um, yes, there's a, there's a bit that's different because I feel regretful that I didn't do this when I was younger, and that instead of that, I studied in order to get a job. And it seems like Kate is working in the same area that she's now studying, and that is completely not true for me. So my ... I guess what it made me think is, how stupid was I to do a degree that would give me a easily transportable job rather than follow my passion?

Louise: And now what's happened is that I studied along the way. So I did my, uh, speech therapy and I worked as a speech therapist for many years. Then I went back to university, and I found it very easy to do a BA in a different area. I did an honors and a master's, and that was all easy. But the reason it was easy is that I'm good at thinking outside the box, and I could just find something clever to say about a limited scope of information.

Louise: And now I feel like my habit of thinking outside the box is actually detrimental to writing a doctorate because I'm thinking so broadly that I'm ... my, my head is chaotic, and my information is chaotic, and I feel totally overwhelmed. And I also feel the, the biggest regret for me is that and I mean, I don't want to make it all sound miserable because I'm, you know, I'm coping. But the biggest regret is where once I ... and maybe it's something to do with age. I was inspired by curiosity and passion. I now feel that this is all so overwhelming. The passion and curiosity is gone. I just want to get it done, and the only reason I'm doing it is that I feel I haven't got time to do it later.

Louise: If I'm gonna do it, I've gotta do it now. I don't want to let myself and other people down. And yeah, that it, it's sort of like what Kath said about, well, she's working with people who would notice if she stopped. And I feel the same way, that the, the people who know I'm doing a degree, I would, I would be embarrassed to say I've thrown the towel in. I sit down and work because I have to, and I don't wanna give up, and I just wanna get this thing done, and that is a big regret for me. So whereas when I was younger, the passion and curiosity drove all my studies. Now I feel like this is just about shame and completion. 

Vikki: Perfect. Okay. That sounds like a good start for our coaching conversation. So Kath, I'm gonna ask you to turn your sound and camera off, and then we'll go. So you mentioned the regret that you didn't do this sooner but one thing I noticed, which I think is interesting, at the beginning you said you regretted doing courses that led you directly to jobs, and taking that very pragmatic thing. But you also said that you think if you'd done a PhD when you were younger, you'd have been driven by passion and curiosity.

Louise: Yes. Yes. 

Vikki: So tell me more about... 'Cause that feels a little in conflict with each other to me. 

Louise: Okay. I- So tell me more about that ... Okay. I went into the degree I did, which was working as a speech therapist, because I thought, "Oh, if I do a BA, I'm not gonna be able to get a job. I'm just gonna have an arts degree." But actually, that was my passion. So I ended up doing a science degree, an honors in science, and specializing in linguistics and speech therapy, which was fine, and I worked, and it was a, a job I enjoyed, but it was just a job. And I feel like if only when I was 19 and starting, or 18, starting university I had done that BA, I would be finished this doctorate long ago. I would have followed my interest, and I regret not having done that. 

Vikki: And what brought you to do it now? 

Louise: Well, this really does qualify me as an extremely mature age student. When my son went to university for his first time, I was so jealous I went back and did what I'd always wanted to do. So it's taken me a while to get through the BA, the honors, the masters, and now the, and now I'm doing the doctorate. So, yeah 

Vikki: And so your regret is that you didn't follow your passion previously? 

Louise: Yeah. But- 20 years before I finally did ... 

Vikki: yeah. But this time you have followed- 

Louise: I have ... your passion But now I'm, now I feel like I'm perhaps too old, have much less energy, am not as driven and motivated as I was when I was young. And so I sort of feel like I've missed the boat. 

Vikki: Okay. And how does it feel when you tell yourself you've missed the boat?

Louise: Well, I feel like, yes, I've missed the boat, so I could accept that and give up, but then I would be so embarrassed because I'm the only person in my group who's doing a doctorate, and everybody talks about it and everybody asks me how it's going and I've, you know, I've wasted all these years doing it. How can I give up now? So I guess what I'm saying is that my biggest regret is that I'm now being driven by shame if I give up rather than by enthusiasm. 

Vikki: Yeah. So we're regretting not doing it when we were younger because then it would have been driven by passion. 

Louise: Yeah. 

Vikki: But this time it has been driven by passion initially- 

Louise: Yes

Vikki: but that that hasn't lasted. 

Louise: No, it hasn't lasted and to me, the reason that it hasn't lasted, and I could be wrong, is that the skills that got me through my degree so easily are not working- in this context. 

Vikki: Yeah. 

Louise: And I haven't got time to remedy that. 

Vikki: Okay. So that bit resonates with what Kath was talking about-

Louise: Exactly

Vikki: that skills not translating-

Louise: Exactly ...

Vikki: quite the way you thought-

Louise: Yes, yes ...

Vikki: they would. Okay. Perfect. So again, I think this really illustrates why many of the challenges that come up for people who are doing PhDs later in life are very similar to ones doing it at any time. So at the moment, you're feeling like you're more driven by the shame of not wanting to give up than by the passion. We have a couple of choices there. We can accept how it is, that this is just how you're getting your PhD done. We can try and reduce the potential shame around not doing it. Not with a view necessarily to stopping, although we could, but to kind of dial down on that as a motivator. Or we can try and dial up the passion as a motivator. Or we can identify some other motivator that also helps. So I'm gonna suggest we kind of think about each of those. How would it feel to just accept that you're now doing this because you're too embarrassed to tell people that you're not gonna, and that's- ... how you're gonna get it done? 

Louise: I think I'm used to thinking that. I think that would be just fine. 

Vikki: So at the mo- But y- but you're still ... 

Louise: It, it, you- I, I, I would do it, but I still wouldn't feel that I ... It wouldn't help me recapture the joy and the passion. Mm-hmm. But it would help me complete it. 

Vikki: Yeah. Okay. So accepting might be pragmatic. 

Louise: Yeah, pragmatic.

Vikki: Yeah. 'Cause it might be just a way of getting it done. But it doesn't feel like the way you wanna get it done. 

Louise: That's right. 

Vikki: Okay. Okay. One ... so the second thought then is how we can dial down a little bit of this story that it would be shameful to stop. Because even if we're staying, it can be really liberating to remember that you absolutely could stop. Same as I mentioned at the beginning, right? Yeah. You did the London Marathon. You could've stopped. You could've decided at 19 miles that you were just too old and tired for this. 

Louise: Yeah. 

Vikki: And Sometimes continuing to run knowing that you could stop if you wanted to is more- empowering than- 

Kath: Yes, yes, yes. Yep ... 

Vikki: than kind of telling yourself you couldn't possibly. 

Louise: Mm. 

Vikki: So in what ways might it be okay if you told your friends you weren't doing it? 

Louise: Um, you know what it's ... As you said that, I realize it's probably not telling my friends I wasn't doing it. It's telling me I wasn't doing it.

Vikki: Mm. Yeah. 

Louise: I'm ... I don't like to think of myself as somebody who gives up. 

Vikki: Okay. What would it mean about you if you were someone who gave up this specific thing? 

Louise: I think I would have to ... In order to live with myself, I would have to have had a very good reason, and it wouldn't just be that it's difficult. It would have to be that this is impossible. And to be honest, this is not impossible. This is just not fun. 

Vikki: Is, "I just don't want to," not a good enough reason?

Louise: Mm, maybe. I'd struggle. I'd struggle to get my head around that. 

Vikki: Why does that feel hard? 

Louise: Because I've never had to give anything up because I couldn't manage it. So I think it would be quite confronting for me to have to say to myself, "You didn't, you couldn't do what you set out to do. You've got the skills. You know you can write it." Just because it's unpleasant, that's not a good enough reason for me. 

Vikki: Have you wanted to give up something in the past? 

Louise: Mm, I suppose yes, a few th- yes. Uh, no. No, I haven't. No. I'm trying to think of what I have. I mean, I, I guess I wanted to give up having to cook and shop and look after children, blah, blah. But I still did it because I had no choice. But I sort of knew I couldn't give up anyway. 

Vikki: Mm. 

Louise: You know, it was... Yeah. No. 

Vikki: I mean, you could have given up. I do th- I could have ... and parents have to tell themself this story too. 

Louise: Yes. 

Vikki: You could have cooked less. But- There's lots of parents who do cook less.

Vikki: You could have cleaned less. You could have- Yeah ... spent less time looking after your children. Yeah. Lots of people do. 

Louise: Yeah. I guess, actually, as you said there, I probably, there were a few times at work when I was working in difficult situations when I thought, "Oh, yeah, I would like to give up." 

Vikki: Mm. 

Louise: But then there were always extrinsic things that kept me going, like the clients on my list or the parents I was dealing with. So there was short-term issues that had to be dealt with that kept me in place. 

Vikki: Yeah. I think it's useful to identify specifically where the shame's coming from, so I think it's brilliant you identified, "Actually, this is, this is not about my friends." Yeah. "My friends will be fine." Yeah. I'm sure your friends ask you how your PhD's going because they care about you- 

Louise: Yeah.

Vikki: Yeah ... rather than because they, they're particularly invested in your PhD. 

Louise: Mm. Mm. 

Vikki: So I think it's useful to recognize, no, this is about what I would tell myself. 

Louise: Mm. 

Vikki: And this is not me. Just for the listeners and for Kath listening, this is not me trying to persuade you to give up your PhD. 

Louise: No, no, no.

Vikki: But I think it's useful to remember that anything that you choose to tell yourself, you can choose not to. 

Louise: Mm. 

Vikki: If you wanted to stop you could tell yourself, "At my age, at my life stage- 

Louise: Mm ... 

Vikki: I don't want to" is a good enough reason not to. 

Louise: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. 

Vikki: And I believe that's true at any life stage, right?

Louise: Yeah. 

Vikki: I think, "I don't want to"- 

Louise: Yeah ... 

Vikki: is a great reason to not do. 

Louise: I guess it, I do want to. I do want to do it. 

Vikki: Okay. So we just need to be careful around this story that we reinforce- Mm ... that it would be shameful to stop. 

Louise: Mm-hmm. 

Vikki: Okay. Because actually sounds as though you don't think your friends would be that judgy if you did.

Louise: Yeah. 

Vikki: Sounds like you don't actually want to. 

Louise: Yeah.

Vikki: So we have to be careful. I'm motivated by the shame feels a little bit like a story you're telling yourself. 

Louise: Yes, yes, yes, yes. There is m- certainly more to it than that. 

Vikki: Maybe there's more to it. 

Louise: Mm. 

Vikki: How can we boost a little bit of the passion, thinking about your reasons for coming into it and so on?

Louise: Yeah. Um, I think that the passion sort of started to diminish once I had collected and analyzed my data because then I knew, I now know- I've got the information. I'm not seeking information anymore. All I'm doing now is writing it up, and writing it up is just a slog. So I think that maybe that's the aspect that I am having trouble with, that this is now the, the sitting down and writing, disciplining myself.

Louise: A, not a time for curiosity and enthusiasm. It's a time for hard work, and I'm, you know, not that keen on that. 

Vikki: Okay. So you... And you've told me that before, that you're not, you're not too keen on hard work. You've done a lot of stuff for somebody who's not too keen on hard work. 

Louise: But- I didn't find the earlier studies hard. Yeah. I think that is the key. Yeah. I really didn't find them hard, and this is a shock to me. 

Vikki: Yeah. 

Louise: That now suddenly it's not the thinking that's hard, it's the doing. 

Vikki: Yeah. 

Louise: And it... I think where, where things are so predictable, where you know you have to hand in a paper that's so long and is covering these things, that's easy. It's where you have to... where there's so many decisions to be made, so many different threads to be coordinated, that I feel overwhelmed, and that's why it's difficult for me. 

Vikki: Yeah. And that's something we have coached on and we can coach on. Mm-hmm. Again, that kind of how you can manage that overwhelm. I'm interested particularly, given the context of our podcast- I'm interested particularly in this notion that all of that would've been easier at an earlier life stage. 

Louise: O- okay, and I'll tell you why. I have been thinking about that. I think if I'd done it when my peers were doing it- 

Vikki: Okay ... 

Louise: I would have had a group of peop- a- and, and also if I wasn't doing it at an English university, living in Australia on a different time thing, I would have had people around me doing the same, and I would have- absorbed their skills. Okay. And I think that- 

Vikki: So that's the bit you are missing, is this notion of a peer group ... 

Louise: the peer group support and just, and not, it's not having other people in the same situation. It's having other people as resources- if that's the way to describe it. To, to say, "Well, you know, I'm working on this," and I don't know, I, yeah, I don't know how to explain what it is. But I just feel like if I'd had more of a group like myself around me, I would have felt more confident about what I was doing. 

Vikki: Yeah. And this is why it's so useful to ask yourself what is it specifically about doing this at an earlier stage that would have- made it feel different. Because we can't go back in time and do it at an earlier stage. But what we can do is think about what is it that I perceive I'm missing at the moment that I would have had then, or that I think- I would have had then. And how can I have more of it now? 

Louise: And I guess that is my difficulty, that it's not only having other students doing doctorates, it's having other students doing doctorates in the same area as me- with the same requirements, in, in humanities, in history, whatever. That I would have heard about the protocol, whereas now every single step of the way I have to find out for myself. And that's exhausting. 

Vikki: Yeah. Yeah. 

Louise: So it's not just, it's not just support of any doctoral students anywhere. It's a specific group of people going through the same thing.

Vikki: So it's that cohort sense- of being part of a group. 

Louise: Yeah, 

Vikki: yeah. Yeah. 

Louise: No, 

Vikki: absolutely. And there'll be a lot of people listening, they're going, "I'm doing this at 27 and I don't have a cohort." So I think some of that is around the program design, the institution and so on. What opportunities have you got where you can find bits of that sense now?

Louise: I really don't know. I've got a wonderful supervisor, but I don't know any other students in my faculty or any other people that she's supervising.

Vikki: Are there opportunities to find them? 

Louise: Well, if I, even if I did find them, they'd be living in a different country. 

Vikki: Mm-hmm. Um- We live in different countries.

Louise: Yes. 

Vikki: I know you're currently in this one. 

Louise: Yeah, but yeah, that is true. I, I suppose I could ask, but I, I... Yeah, I could, I could. I could follow that up and try and see if I could find other people. But I guess because I feel like I'm so far along the path, that really all I should do now is just write. 

Vikki: Is that true, though?

Louise: Well, I suppose some connections would be nice ... yeah, it would still, yeah, it would still be nice to have some element with, of connection with people who were just writing. 

Vikki: Yeah. Because when we get fixed on something being the problem or the solution, that's something we can't change. Like, I wish I'd done this when I was younger.

Vikki: It almost becomes a kind of- The word excuse is coming into my head... but I don't mean it in a judgy way. But as in it almost becomes a reason not to problem solve now. Because it becomes- this kind of, "Oh, this would've been easier- if I'd done that."

Vikki: So my Labrador, you know Marley who comes on calls every now and again. My Labrador is the most, kind of just accept- if he lays down and his head's up against the wall like that, he just stays there in a like, "Oh, this appears to be where I'm sleeping," kind of way. He doesn't move. He could just shuffle up and be much more comfortable, but he just stays.

Vikki: And I just imagine in his head, him going, "I wish I'd laid down over there." Now that's one he could immediately fix, but when you're in a "I wish I'd done this 30 years ago," or whatever then it puts you in a position where you can't fix it, right?

Louise: Yeah. 

Vikki: My challenge for you is to ponder which elements of this you could grab bits of. How could you make it feel a little bit more cohort-y? How could you find people... As an example, there's a ton of historians and humanities people in the PhD Life Coach Membership- who you have access to through the community, for example.

Vikki: And I know they're not in the same cohort as you, but they will be having a lot of shared experiences with you, for example. So we get to think, "Oh, what would it have been like? How can I have a bit of that now?" 

Louise: Mm. 

Vikki: The other way round to flip it is to ask yourself the more specific question of, okay, exactly when? Because then you get to say, "Okay, well, had I done it in my 20s, what would've been the downside of that?" We've got people who are doing it in their 20s. We've got people who are doing it with very young children. 

Louise: Mm. 

Vikki: What would've the downside of that been? We've got people doing it with teenagers and aging parents. What would've been the problems of doing it then? Yeah. We've got people whose kids have left home doing it alongside a busy job, like Kath. We've got people who are doing it at your life stage. So I think the other thing is almost forcing your brain just to be a little bit m- more specific and be like, "Okay, I've got problems doing it now. What problems would I have swapped it for had I tried to do this at 31?" Or whatever.

Louise: Yeah.

Vikki: Cause it's easy to romanticize how it would have been. Kath probably sometimes thinks, "If I just waited till I'd retired, I could spend all my time on this and indulge in it, and really be able to enjoy it, rather than wedging it in amongst a busy job."

Louise: It's, it's so true.

Vikki: So what actions do you think you can take coming off this call to kind of translate any of what we've talked about? 

Louise: Well, I think probably the best thing I could do right now is ask my supervisor if she knows of anybody in the faculty who's doing, who's at the same sort of stage as me. And it doesn't have to be in the same area, but just somebody I could chat to occasionally. I think that would help a lot. 

Vikki: Perfect. I love it. Kath, do you wanna come back on? How was that for you, Kath? 

Kath: That was really interesting. And like Louise said when she came back on, there's just so much sort of resonates. I have often thought, "Why didn't I do this earlier?" But exactly Vikki's point, it's the rose-tinted spectacle element, I suppose, about things. And without wanting to go a bit woo-woo, we find ourselves where we are at the time that we are with the knowledge that we've got, that, you know, you're not the same person as you were way back when and we can't change that.

Kath: I think it would be lovely if, whether it's on this community or through your supervisor, if you were able to find somebody, because as you were talking about the passion and the enthusiasm... I've got colleagues and friends at work who have completed and successfully gone through viva. And every one of them, when they've been writing up, just wants it done. And I've written down here, "I really want that slog. I want to be where you are." But I think that just no matter how much you love your thing, whether you think it's the start of your career, you're doing it as a passion project, by the time you've lived with it for so long, I think it really is difficult to to keep that same passion that you had at the outset. So I wouldn't beat yourself up, about that bit.

Kath: I think peers is an interesting one. I was at a conference recently for postgraduates, and there was a group of younger students from another university who were all working on shared secondary social data. They were using similar thematic approaches, and it was so obvious that they just bounced off each other and kind of worked together. So although I am doing my thesis where, with other people in real life, I still feel quite isolated in comparison to what they have, and it's just a very different way of doing things.

Kath: So again, I think finding some, if it's historians, from what Vikki said, would be really good. But I just think my conclusion is that there's no perfect time or context or temporal space or whatever. But at the very, very first session I did in the life coaching, there was people who were full-time who were talking about the difficulties that they have in structuring their time and managing things and, you know, 8:00 in the morning, oh my goodness, the whole day just stretches out.

Kath: And I was like, "Oh my God, I would love that problem." And then I thought, "No, everybody's just got their own thing to deal with." So I think, yeah, just finding the community, whether it's within the life coach and it's never too late to just find a kindred spirit 

Vikki: I love that ... yeah.

Louise: That's great. 

Vikki: Thank you both- Thank you ... so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. I loved how there were elements that were really specific to the different life stages and things, but then there were so many elements that are kind of just a really universal experience of the challenge of doing a PhD, and that self-leading and that organizing ourselves, and the kind of self-doubt and imposter syndrome, and everything like that. And yes, I thoroughly agree, Kath, that there's different challenges at any stage, and there's different opportunities at any stage. Thank you so much for both coming on. I really appreciate it. Obviously Louise and Kath are both members of the PhD Life Coach membership. We are opening up. This is going out at the end of June. We are opening up at the end of July for new members. So if any of you have thought, ooh, I need to know more about that, do go to my website, thephdlifecoach.com, where you'll be able to click on the membership button and find out all about it there. So thank you everybody for listening. Thank you Louise and Kath for coming on, and I will see you all next week.